15th-19th Century : The Fall of Bruges
15<sup>th</sup>-19<sup>th</sup> Century
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The merchants in Bruges gradually withdraw from active trade and start acting as brokers or intermediaries, as a result of which they are more dependent on foreign merchants. The citizens of Bruges slowly lose hold of the main activity: trade itself.
Other factors are responsible for the economic downturn of Bruges as well :
- ‘het Zwin’, the lifeline for the accessibility of the city by sea, starts silting up.
Sluis becomes the new outer port of Bruges.
– England starts its own textile industry, as a result of which the export of wool from
Flanders
experiences a decline. The ships that supply Bruges must often sail back empty. As a
consequence, they prefer not to berth anymore. The protectionist ban on importing English
cloth also compels merchants to look for other places.
– other ports, such as Antwerp, Hamburg and Bremen, develop and gradually take over the
commercial position of Bruges.
It is a well-established fact that Bruges lost a lot of its economic power after 1450.
In the 15th century, under the Burgundian Dukes, Philip and Charles the Bold and Mary of Burgundy, the city reaches a new height, yet primarily as a cultural city that holds great attraction for artists, such as Memling and Van Eyck.
Under the Habsburgs and the Spaniards (Charles the Fifth) and during the religious wars, Bruges gradually became a dormant city. Maximilian of Austria wanted to curtail the power of Bruges and introduced high taxes. The subsequent political riots resulted in his imprisonment in Bruges in 1488. Out of revenge, he deprived the merchants of Bruges of more privileges after his release. During the Eighty Years’ War, Bruges became a front-line city and in 1604, Sluis was captured by the North Netherlands (by the troops of Maurice of Nassau): Bruges lost its outer port and its connection to the sea at one stroke.
In addition, this was again confirmed by the Westfalen Peace Treaty (1648), which involved the end of the religious wars and the definition of the borders between the North and South Netherlands. Antwerp also lost its outlet to the sea. For Holland, on the contrary, it was a ‘Golden Age’.
In the 17th century, the Flemings attempted to revive trade by digging the Canal Ostend-Bruges-Ghent with the dock (‘Handelskom’) in Bruges, but by then Bruges had not been an international port for a long time and only played a minor role as a small regional port.
Under Napoleon, the digging of a canal between Bruges and Breskens (currently known as the ‘Damse Vaart’) was started, but this project was never finished due to the Belgian revolution. All in all, the period between the 16th and the 20th century was a period of poverty for Bruges. There simply was no money to replace old buildings with new ones, as a result of which the historic setting of the Middle Ages has been largely preserved. But this has only been beneficial to the tourist sector from the second half of the 20th century onwards.
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